


Hurt

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Coping Mechanisms, Flogging, Hand Jobs, Impact Play, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Nogitsune trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Threesome - M/M/M, Under-negotiated Kink, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 09:17:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: Peter pulls his phone out of his pocket and sends Chris a text:You don’t need to punish yourself for the sins of your family. I’ll do it for you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Twisted_Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twisted_Mind/gifts), [Bunnywest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bunnywest/gifts).

> This one is for Twist and Bunny, whose entire fault it is!

Peter Hale has always been an opportunist, and Chris smells like opportunity. 

It’s the anniversary of the fire. 

Peter doesn’t mark the day in any way. He never has. Why should he, when he feels the loss of his pack, his _ family_, in his bones every day? He makes no ritual out of it, buys no flowers, keeps no vigil. He makes sure he sees Derek in the morning, and squeezes his shoulder tightly before leaving again. That’s his only acknowledgement, just as Derek’s sharp nod in reply is his. They aren’t demonstrative in their grief. They keep their howling for when they’re in wolf form. 

The moon knows their heartbreak. Peter has no interest in sharing it with anyone else. 

His clothes are designer. He sees no point in rending them. 

Peter spends the rest of the day like he spends any other. In the afternoon he sets aside his book and leaves his apartment to go and get groceries. A mundane task for a mundane day. 

He’s in the cereal aisle, staring at the garishly coloured packs of sugary monstrosities that Stiles has somehow bullied Derek into stocking at the loft, when he catches Chris’s scent. 

Gun oil, leather, cologne and blood. 

Peter watches as Chris turns into the aisle. He’s moving stiffly, and Peter rakes his gaze up and down looking for an obvious wound. He doesn’t see one. 

“Argent,” he says, narrow-eyed. 

He catches the flash of surprise in Chris’s eyes before his expression shutters. “Hale.” 

They aren’t friends. They will never be friends. 

They’re both orbiting the edges of Scott McCall’s pack. They are, at best, occasional allies. Even that may be over-stating it, and so Peter rethinks it. He’s adaptable like that. He and Chris Argent are then, at best, two men who, when fighting a common enemy, have a silent agreement not to kill one another at the same time. 

It’s the best either of them can hope for, probably. Peter’s a realist. 

He inhales through his nose, and the scent of blood is stronger this time. Whatever it is, clearly the wound is fresh. 

“Been hunting?” he asks. 

Chris’s eyes flicker. “No.” 

His heartbeat is steady, but his scent sours. He stinks of guilt and grief, just like Derek did this morning. 

Peter is intrigued. “I’ve been told you’ve been going on a lot of solo hunts lately.” 

Been told, learned from eavesdropping, what’s the difference? 

Chris clenches his jaw, and reaches for some dull generic brand muesli. Of course he does. “What about it?” 

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Peter asks, his mouth quirking. “We’re a _ pack_. According to the True Alpha, anyway. Still, I can’t be the only one who rankles when a gormless teenager tells me what to do, am I right?” 

Chris dumps the muesli in his basket. “Whatever shit you’re stirring up right now, I’m not interested.” 

“No,” Peter says thoughtfully. “You’re not, are you?” 

Chris pushes past him, wincing as their shoulders collide. Peter smells a fresh bloom of blood, and reaches out to catch Chris’s shoulders. 

“What–”

His fingers dig into Chris’s jacket, and Chris tries to flinch away, a sharp burst of pain overwhelming his scent. 

Peter digs his fingers in, and Chris stills like a rabbit frozen under the claws of a wolf. 

Peter lifts his other hand to Chris’s other shoulder, and Chris winces again. 

His left shoulder and his right shoulder are both hurt. Peter drags his fingers over the back of Chris’s jacket, mapping the strange injuries. His left shoulder, his right shoulder, his back. The jacket isn’t a light one, but Peter can feel the heat of the wounds underneath it. He can almost see them, red and stark against Chris’s skin, a messy cross-hatch of marks. He closes his eyes and inhales, his fangs itching. 

“What’s this?” he murmurs. “How unexpected, Christopher. Still waters do run deep, don’t they?” 

Chris wrenches away from him, and spins on his heel to face him again. “Shut your mouth.” 

He stinks of misery and humiliation now. 

“Or what?” Peter smirks. “Do you even know what day it is? I think that today, of all days, I’ve got a right to say whatever the hell I want to _ you _.” 

Chris lifts his gaze, and Peter is startled by the anguish he sees in those eyes. Then Chris tightens his grip on his basket and hurries away. 

It’s not until later, when Peter is packing his groceries into his car, that the pieces fall into place. 

Chris Argent doesn’t get to howl at the moon, does he? But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to howl. And, just perhaps, today is significant to him as well. Today is the anniversary of the fire. It’s not just the anniversary of the day that Peter’s pack was murdered, is it? It’s also the anniversary of the day Kate Argent broke the Code and started the chain reaction that would eventually lead to Chris Argent losing everybody he’d ever loved. 

Peter pulls his phone out of his pocket and sends Chris a text: 

_ You don’t need to punish yourself for the sins of your family. I’ll do it for you. _

He’s not sure if Chris will think it’s a genuine offer or an attempt to humiliate him some more. Peter’s not sure either. 

It doesn’t matter, of course. 

Chris won’t answer him. 

*** 

Gun oil, leather, blood, and the thump-thump-thump of a familiar heartbeat. 

Peter sets his book aside and tilts his head to listen. He hears the elevator doors roll open at the end of the corridor, and then the steady footsteps as someone approaches his door. Chris’s heartbeat is elevated, but his footsteps never falter. 

Peter rises from his chair and crosses to the front door. 

He opens it before Chris has a chance to knock. 

Chris stares at him, and Peter stares back. 

Then Chris’s mouth twists. “You want at me?” 

He sounds bitter and angry, defiant and defeated all at once. He’s wound tighter than a spring, and Peter would very much like to see what happens when he applies some pressure. 

Peter doesn’t let his surprise show, or his amusement. He just steps back from the door and allows Chris to enter, locking the door behind him. 

*** 

“Take your clothes off,” Peter says. “Let me see what you’ve done to yourself.” 

Chris, mouth pressed into a tight line, winces as he shrugs his jacket off. He drops it onto the living room floor. He unbuttons his shirt, and drops it, too. Then he turns so Peter can see his back. 

Peter studies the marks on his skin, both old and new. The older ones appear to be mostly hunter-related: claws, teeth, knives or bullets. Peter’s skin would tell a similar story if not for werewolf healing.The spread of the newer marks indicates that they are self-inflicted, and they are clearly the work of a flogger. Four-stranded, by the look, and knotted. A cruel little device that Chris has applied with absolutely no artistry at all. 

“I think I said all your clothes,” Peter says mildy, testing how much control Chris will give him. 

Chris’s spine stiffens, but then he bends down to unlace his boots and remove them. He straightens up again, and steps out of his jeans and underwear. 

He keeps his back to Peter. 

That’s fine, for now. 

“The problem with a flogger,” Peter says, “is that it’s too short. You can barely get any strength in the blows.” He steps forward and traces a red line that begins on the curve of Chris’s shoulder and ends below his shoulder blade. Chris jerks under his touch, but Peter doesn’t remove it. “And the problem with self-flagellation is that you know exactly when to brace. It’s all a little like cheating, isn’t it?” 

Chris doesn’t answer. 

“Well, by the look of this, you’re not opposed to a bit of blood,” Peter muses, sliding his finger down a welt and pressing where the knot of the flogger has opened the skin. Chris hisses, but doesn’t move, so Peter presses a little harder. He feels no underlying damage to the muscle tissue. “That’s good, because neither am I. As long as it’s yours.” 

He gives Chris a moment to rethink this and back out. Chris remains silent and stoic. 

Of course he does. 

He’s a martyr offering himself up, isn’t he? He’s here to be immolated on the altar of Peter’s hatred. What that says about his mental state, Peter neither knows nor particularly cares. Chris is a little rabbit who has stepped knowingly into the jaws of a predator. The least Peter can do is bite. 

“Down the corridor,” he says. “Second door on the right.” 

He resists the urge to slap Chris’s ass to get him moving. He watches it instead, letting his own arousal build as Chris walks down the corridor. It’s clear that Chris is here to be hurt. It’s clear that he’s given up full control to Peter. And it’s also clear—knowing everything that Peter knows about Chris—that there will be no talk of limits or safe words. That’s not what this is. Chris isn’t here for a scene. He’s here for something very different. He’s here for a sacrifice. 

Chris is here because he thinks Peter will destroy him. Because he wants that. And there was a time, Peter supposes, that he wanted it, too. 

But Peter is older and smarter nowadays, or at least likes to pretend he is. Whatever the case, he doesn’t want to kill Chris. How could he, when he’s such an egotist, and looking at Chris Argent is uncomfortably like staring into a mirror? No, Peter isn’t going to kill Chris. 

But there’s a good chance, when this is over, that Chris will wish he had. 

*** 

Chris pulls himself up short when he reaches the room. “The fuck is all this?” 

Peter smirks.

There’s a reason Peter hasn’t told the pack where he lives, and it’s not just to entertain Stiles’s fantasies that he’s a supervillain with a hidden underground lair. It’s because the last thing he needs is teenagers poking their noses in his business. To be fair, most of said business is packed tidily away in the armoire in the corner, but the spanking bench and the Saint Andrew’s cross just don’t fit in there. 

“Oh, so it’s fine to want me to punish you, as long as I’m doing it selflessly?” Peter asks. He stands behind Chris in the doorway, and reaches down to grip his ass. “But if I happen to enjoy it, somehow that sullies the whole thing?” 

A muscle in Chris’s jaw twitches, but he doesn’t move away.

“You walked in here,” Peter says, his voice as low as a growl. “You can walk out again. But, if you do, you’ll never know just how much I can make you hurt. Make you _ pay_.” 

That’s the crux of it, he thinks. Not just Chris’s grief, but his guilt. 

For a moment he’s sure that Chris will turn around and leave. Chris’s body is vibrating with tension, tiny tremors rippling through his muscles. And then he jerks his head in a sharp nod, and steps forward into the room. 

Peter strolls in after him. “Get on the cross.” 

He’s more amused by saying that than he lets on, but that’s what Chris is here for, isn’t it? To be martyred? 

Chris’s heartbeat ratchets up as he moves toward the cross. 

“That’s it,” Peter tells him. “Just lean into it.” 

Chris hasn’t looked him in the eye since arriving at the apartment. And now, as Peter steps forward the fasten his wrists to the Saint Andrew’s cross, he keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the wall behind it. That’s fine. Peter will allow that for now. 

Peter crouches down and fastens Chris’s ankles as well. Then he stands up and surveys his handiwork. 

Chris Argent, bound helplessly at Peter’s mercy. Or Peter’s lack thereof. Same thing. More than a few people have been bound to that cross in the past, though none recently, and none as stoically as Chris. For someone who walked in here of his own volition, Chris does a good job of looking unwilling. 

Which is the trick, Peter supposes. He wants to hurt, but not to enjoy this, and he doesn’t want to admit how much he _ needs _ to hurt. Because neediness is a weakness, and Chris would never show his belly to the beast. 

Too bad the beast can see it anyway. 

“I thought a single tail,” Peter says, and moves to open the armoire. He takes out his favourite bullwhip. It’s only short, at four feet long, but there’s not a lot of space for anything bigger in this room anyway. He coils the tail around his hand, testing the give of the leather and letting himself remember the way it handles. He checks it for breakage and fraying, but finds none, and the popper was only replaced last month. Peter keeps his equipment in good condition, and scrupulously clean. Peter is a master of control when it comes to the bullwhip, but he doesn’t tell Chris that because he knows Chris doesn’t want to hear it. 

He steps back again, and lets the tail of the whip uncoil. The fall taps faintly against the hardwood floor. It’s a tiny sound, but one that causes Chris’s entire body to tense with anticipation. 

Peter smirks at that, and paces back and forth behind for a moment just to keep him on edge—and to silently remind him that he has no power here. 

He watches Chris’s body. Watches him take a breath and hold it. Watches him let it out again. 

And then Peter moves. 

The tail of the whip arcs through the air and lands solidly across Chris’s left shoulder. The fall curls around his upper arm—something Peter would never let happen with anyone else on his cross—a sharp, brutal kiss to contrast with the thudding, throbbing impact of the tail. Chris jerks forward against the cross, his fingers clenching and his toes curling, all the breath pushed out of him. He has to fill his lungs before he can even make a whimper, and that whimper, which he tries desperately to hold in his throat, might be the sweetest sound Peter’s ever heard. 

Peter steps forward, and rubs his thumb along the welt he’s raised. “And that,” he whispers, while Chris squirms underneath his painful touch, “is why self-flagellation is cheating. Isn’t it so much better when you don’t know what’s coming?” 

Chris grunts. 

Peter doesn’t mind. 

Words can come later. 

After the screaming, probably. 

*** 

The blood that Peter promised comes on the third stroke, which reopens one of the shallow cuts Chris inflicted on himself with the knots of the flogger. It’s a thin crimson ribbon that slides down his sweat-soaked skin and smears away into nothing. Peter doubts Chris can even feel it above the sensory overload off every other pain receptor in his back screaming for attention. Peter has no doubt that this whipping feels worse than it is because of Chris’s pre-existing injuries. 

By the fourth stroke—which probably feels more like the fortieth—Chris’s breath is coming in short, sharp pants, and he’s shuddering. 

By the fifth, he’s slumped against the cross, pliant and silent. 

Peter steps up close behind him, and traces a finger down his spine. His skin shines with a sheen of sweat. “Why are you here?” he asks softly, his mouth against his ear. “The fire?” 

Chris mumbles something.

“Why are you here?” Peter asks again. “Surely you have your own sins, Christopher. You don’t need to pay for theirs.” 

That gets a growl out of him. 

Peter smirks, and licks a stripe up the side of Chris’s throat. He tastes like sweat and pain. “But here you are, and you’ve put yourself in the hands of a wolf, which means you want to hurt, don’t you? You want to pay for what your family did. You want to pay for the fire, and Victoria, and for Allison too.” 

Chris growls again, sounding more like a wolf than Peter, and jerks back to try to shake Peter off. “Shut up! Shut up and keep going!” 

“Testy,” Peter murmurs and slides a hand down Chris’s flank. “But if that’s what you want...” 

Chris came here to put himself into the hands of an animal. He expects Peter to rend and tear at his flesh. And, while Peter might be a sadist, he’s no feral monster. Not these days at least. He doesn’t hate Chris Argent. He hasn’t hated him in a long time. And—the realisation shocks him—he takes no real pleasure in the fact Chris is carrying around so much guilt and grief that it’s brought him to Peter’s apartment, expecting the worst. He supposes he should be offended that Chris thinks that of him, but offence would be an affectation. He’s tired mostly, he thinks, of being surrounded by other people’s grief as well as his own. 

If Chris can’t howl at the moon, then he can howl here. 

He thinks he needs pain, but he doesn’t. He needs release. Peter can give him both. 

But Chris will have to find his own absolution.

*** 

Peter delivers strokes six and seven in quick succession, giving Chris no time to process six—a fiery lash across his left shoulder—before he hits him with seven. Seven is a burning lash across both cheeks of his ass. It’s seven that breaks him. 

Chris tilts back his head and _ screams_. 

*** 

“Okay,” Peter says, his own heart thumping in counterpoint to Chris’s. He stands close behind him, pressing his clothed body against Chris’s nakedness. Chris is shivering, twitching, and his hair is plastered to his forehead and dark with sweat. Any thoughts Peter had to take him to a round ten lashes immediately vanish. “Okay.” 

Chris is too shaken, too shocked, to push him away. It’s a form of subspace. It’s not the sort Peter is most familiar with—Chris is too twitchy and he was never flying—but Chris has gone _ somewhere_. 

“Okay,” Peter murmurs, a soothing litany now, and slides his hands around to Chris’s chest. He splays the fingers of his left hand above Chris’s thumping heart. He slides his other hand downward, to where the hair on Chris’s abdomen thickens and becomes more coarse. 

Chris jerks back, a full-body shudder going through him as his welts rub against the fabric of Peter’s shirt. 

“Let me,” Peter says, nuzzling against Chris’s throat. “Let me. This is how we finish.” 

He wraps his hand around Chris’s dick, coaxing an erection out of him. It’s easy enough to do. Chris is all warring sensation and crossed wires at the moment. Peter presses harder against his back, igniting the fire in the welts there, and Chris’s dick hardens further in his grasp. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Come on. You need this too.” 

A drop of pre-cum, hot as blood, slides down the shaft of Chris’s dick. Peter catches it on his thumb and rubs it over the head. 

“Come on,” he urges. “Come for me, Christopher.” 

And Chris, with a shout, obeys. 

*** 

Peter lets Chris down from the cross, but refuses to let him escape. Instead, he steers him into the bedroom, pushes him face-down onto the bed, and fetches his supplies from the bathroom. The coolness of the aloe lotion makes Chris gasp, and brings him around from whatever pain-and-cum-drunk stupor he’s been in. His muscles tense, but Peter doesn’t let him up—straddling him instead, and rubs the lotion carefully into his welts. 

The tiny cut he opened with the bullwhip is still weeping a little blood, so Peter dabs it carefully with Neosporin. 

“Just listen while I do this,” he says. 

Chris curls his fingers into loose fists. 

“You’re not your family,” Peter says. “You’ve proved that a hundred times over. I’m never going to punish you for the fire, because that wasn’t your fault. But I’m not going to judge you for seeking it out either. Pain gives you an endorphin rush. It’s cathartic. So is sex. Wanting those things isn’t wrong, and I’d be happy to give them to you, Christopher, whenever you ask me to.” 

Chris grunts. “I don’t know what this is.” 

“I’m explaining it to you,” Peter says, and digs his fingers into a knot in Chris’s shoulder that makes him gasp and then melt into the mattress. “I’m willing to do this for you whenever you want, not because you owe me, or because I’m getting revenge—I’ve had my revenge, remember? It led to Derek ripping my throat out, so it’s not something I intend to repeat. The things that I do in that room have nothing to do with revenge, or the wolf, or with any of the supernatural fuckery that is our lives. I do them because I like doing them. I get the same rush out of being in control that I think you could get from giving it over to me regularly.” 

Chris is silent. 

“This isn’t something you have to decide right now,” Peter says. He slides his hands down Chris’s back, feeling his spine arch into his touch. “This is something I want you to go away and think about. But just so you know, there is a lot more that I can give you than I showed you tonight. I could make you fly, if you wanted.” 

Chris exhales slowly. “And what would I have to do in return?” 

“Just what you did tonight,” Peter says. He bends down and presses a soft kiss to Chris’s shoulder. “You just have to let me.” 

*** 

A week later Peter is eating dinner in front of his television when he hears the elevator doors roll open and the steady thump-thump-thump of Chris’s heartbeat as he approaches the apartment door. 

Warmth courses through him, and he smiles. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chris Argent doesn’t know how he got himself into this. 

Well, that’s a lie. He knows exactly how desperate and self-loathing and ready to die he was when he fronted up on Peter Hale’s doorstep five months ago expecting the werewolf to kill him, or at least hurt him so badly he could escape his own mind for however long it took to patch himself back up again. But that’s not what happened. Peter might have broken him like Chris wanted, but Peter also put him back together again that night, which was never part of the deal. 

That’s what you get, Chris thinks, for trusting a werewolf in general, and Peter Hale specifically. 

And now somehow they’re in a relationship. 

They’re not open about it, but they’re not hiding it either. It’s that they mostly hang around teenagers who wouldn’t notice the world was ending unless it impacted on their little personal dramas. The kids have this emotional elasticity that Chris envies half the time, and the other half bitterly resents. Scott McCall laughs sometimes, and Chris wants to grab him by the throat and scream at him that Allison is _ dead _. And that’s not fair. He knows it’s not fair, but the feeling is there whether it’s rational or not. 

On nights like those Peter works him over with the bullwhip, and Chris lets go. He lets go of all his anger and his grief and his frustration and his fear, and he embraces the pain and he _ flies_. It leaves him wrung out and boneless at the end of each night, but in the morning he is clear-headed and anchored again. 

And so Chris has found his coping mechanism, his healing mechanism, as unconventional as it is. And the kids have more or less bounced back, rallying around one another to work through the trauma of Allison’s death. 

Except for Stiles. 

It takes Chris coming out from behind his own dark clouds to see it. 

Stiles is still drowning. He acts like he’s not, but it’s there in the way he flinches sometimes, the way his smiles are too hollow sometimes, too manic at others, and in the way he sometimes unconsciously counts his fingers—the nails bitten down until they’ve bled—over and over again. 

Chris sees it in the way that John watches Stiles closely, his face pinched with worry. He sees it in the way that Stiles draws back from the rest of the pack, and makes excuses not to join them, not to stay longer. 

And he sees it most of all in the way that Stiles looks at _ him_. Like he thinks Chris hates him, and expects him to lash out and hurt him. Like Stiles would welcome it with open arms if he did.

It’s the same way that Chris used to look at Peter. 

Stiles is drowning. 

*** 

There’s a dive of a bar out on County Route 12 that Chris sometimes likes to visit. It’s got nothing to recommend it but nostalgia—Chris’s SUV broke down once on the way home from a hunt, so he and Victoria walked a mile to the bar and drank cheap beers until the tow truck arrived. There might have been line dancing involved. It still makes Chris smile to think about it. He likes to grab a beer and sit at a corner table and remember the fun times. 

One Friday night he’s halfway through his beer when the bar doors open and Stiles walks in with some guy. Some guy with more biker gang tattoos than a promo poster for _ Sons of Anarchy_, and a hand down Stiles’s pants. 

Chris is up and across the bar before he even thinks about what he’s doing. 

“Watch it, man,” the biker says, when Chris grabs for Stiles’s arm. “Get your own piece of ass.” 

“He’s seventeen,” Chris growls. “And his father’s a cop.” 

The biker doesn’t object when Chris drags Stiles out of the place. 

Chris looks around the parking lot for Stiles’s Jeep. “Did you drive?” 

Stiles shakes his head wordlessly. 

“Get in my car then,” Chris says. And then, when they’re peeling out of the parking lot: “What the hell were you thinking?” 

Stiles shakes his head again. 

“Stiles,” Chris says, trying to temper his tone. “Do you even know that guy?” 

Stiles stares at his lap, and at his bitten-down fingernails. “Not really.” 

“Not really? What does that mean?” 

“I met him online. On an app.” 

Chris inhales deeply. “Stiles, you know that’s dangerous. Anything could have happened. You could have got seriously hurt, or worse.”

Stiles shrugs and looks away. Mumbles something Chris doesn’t catch. 

“What was that?” 

Stiles shrugs again. “I said maybe that’s what I want.” 

*** 

“Hello, Christopher,” Peter says when he opens the door to them. “And Stiles.” He looks at Chris and arches his brows. 

Chris urges Stiles gently through the doorway, a hand on his lower back. “Tell Peter what you were doing tonight, Stiles. Tell him where I found you.” 

Stiles stares at him, brow furrowed.

“It’ll help,” Chris says. “I promise. He’ll know what to do.” 

“Why would you want to help me?” Stiles asks slowly. He looks between them, wary, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Either of you?” 

Peter closes the door and leans against it, folding his arms over his chest. “Christopher?” 

“Just tell him,” Chris says again, holding Stiles’s gaze. 

Stiles shrugs, and glances at the floor. “I was at a bar. I met a guy.” 

“You met a guy online,” Chris corrects. “A guy with a Vagos patch on his leathers. And you went to the bar with him. And when I pulled you out of there and said you could have been seriously hurt, what did you tell me?” 

Stiles lifts his gaze. “I told you maybe that was what I wanted.” 

Peter tilts his head. “And do you still want that, Stiles?” 

Chris doesn’t need to be a werewolf to hear Stiles breath stutter as he answers, “Why are you asking?” 

*** 

Peter doesn’t lead Stiles to the Saint Andrew’s cross. Instead, he guides Stiles to the spanking bench and stands beside him while Stiles stares at it wide-eyed. 

“Tell me why you want to hurt,” he says softly. 

Chris doesn’t remember any conversation like this when he was first ordered into the room, but he knows that if Peter had tried to talk to him, he would’ve just cut and run. 

“I...” Stiles swallows. He shakes his head as though to clear it. “When I was six, I rode my bike into the fence in our back yard and cut myself on a nail. Had to get a tetanus shot and everything. And it left this scar. And then–” He huffs out an anxious breath. “And after the Nogitsune spat me out again, I don’t have that scar. I don’t have _ any _ of them. It’s like this body isn’t mine, and I’m just a passenger, and sometimes I don’t know if I’m even _ me _ anymore.” 

He turns away slightly, and scrubs at his eyes. 

“And pain helps with that?” Peter asks gently. 

“It feels real,” Stiles says, his voice hitching. “When I hurt, I feel real.” 

Peter meets Chris’s gaze for a moment before turning his attention back to Stiles. “I can help you with that, if you’ll let me.” 

“Why should I trust you?” Stiles asks. 

Peter raises his eyebrows. “Why should you trust me more than some criminal biker you met online?” 

Stiles flushes. “Point.” 

“If you tell me to stop,” Peter says, “I’ll stop. If you tell me to slow down, I’ll slow down. Understand?” 

Stiles gives a jerky nod. 

“Take your clothes off,” Peter says, “and kneel over the bench. I won’t restrain you. Chris can show you where to put your hands and knees.” 

Stiles darts an anxious look at Chris. “You’ve done this?” 

“You’re not the only one who needs to feel pain,” Chris tells him. 

Stiles’s eyes widen at that, and then he turns his back on them and undresses. 

His body is lean and pale and dotted with moles. He’s not scrawny, but he’s not muscular either. He’s beautiful. When he turns back to face Chris, his hands cupped over his junk, his pale skin is slowly being eclipsed by a rising pink flush. 

“Over here,” Chris says. “Kneel down.” 

There’s a moment of awkwardness when Stiles has to move his hands to get into position. He squeezes his eyes shut instead, as though that will preserve his modesty, and Chris helps him arrange his knees and hands. Then Chris kneels in front of the bench, and puts a hand on Stiles’s shoulder. 

“You’re okay,” he promises. “I’m here.” 

Stiles blinks his eyes open. They’re shining with tears. “You should want me dead the most, though.” 

Chris’s throat hurts when he swallows. “That’s not true, Stiles, and I’m sorry if I ever did anything to make you think it was. It wasn’t your fault.” 

“You didn’t,” Stiles whispers. “I just...” 

“Stiles,” Chris says. “I understand.” 

Peter rounds the front of the spanking bench, and leans down to show Stiles what he’s holding. “This is a flogger. Chris likes the bullwhip, but this will be perfect for you, I think. It has thirty-eight tails, and it’s made out of kangaroo leather, which is light and strong, and gives a lovely sting.” 

“What do I have to do?” Stiles asks, his voice rasping. 

“All you have to do, sweetheart,” Peter says in a low voice, “is _ feel_.” 

*** 

The warm up lulls Stiles into a false sense of security, Chris suspects, because he’s clearly not expecting it when Peter suddenly puts some real strength into the blows.

Stiles jerks and yelps when the flogger hits his ass with a resounding _ thwack_, and then shivers as his body rides the sudden sting. Chris is more than familiar with the initial fight-or-flight response to pain, and with the strange bliss of sublimating it into acceptance. Of learning to ride the pain instead of fighting it. He eases Stiles through that fraught moment of panic. 

“Just let it happen,” he murmurs, dragging his fingers through Stiles’s hair. “Just let yourself feel it.” 

Stiles is gasping for breath, his fingers jerking where they’re curled around the supports of the bench. He’s wide-eyed, his mouth hanging open. 

Peter hits him again. 

There’s no yelp this time, only a moan. 

By the fifth hard strike, Stiles’s eyes are half-closed and his body is trembling. 

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Peter says. “You’re doing so well for us.” His soothing tone is at odds with another harsh-sounding strike of the flogger. 

_ Thwack. Thwack. Thwack _. 

By the eighth strike Stiles is floating, his eyes unfocused and his body lax against the bench. His hips are rocking gently, and his moans are more pleasure than pain at this point. He’s flying faster than Chris ever did at the beginning. 

Peter lands a final two strokes, and then sets the flogger aside. With Chris’s help, he lifts Stiles from the bench—Stiles’s limbs are liquid—and carries him into the bedroom. Chris fetches the aloe from the bathroom. When he gets back, Stiles is lying on his stomach on Peter’s luxurious comforter, his head resting on his folded arms. His eyes are still half-closed. 

Peter kneels on one side of him, and Chris kneels on the other. 

“Can you feel your body now, sweetheart?” Peter asks, rubbing lotion over Stiles’s ass. The flogger has left the skin red and hot and, Chris knows from experience, throbbing with every beat of his heart.

“Mmmm,” Stiles murmurs. 

Chris squirts a dollop of lotion into his hand, and begins to massage Stiles’s shoulders and back. His skin is so lovely, and Chris wonders if it fits him a little better now. 

“Let’s turn you over now,” Peter says. “This will sting a little, but I have a feeling you’ll enjoy that.” 

Stiles moans when his sore ass comes into contact with the comforter. He squirms as well, hands inching over to cover his erection. 

“You can take care of that, if you like,” Peter says. “Or we can take care of it for you.” 

Stiles sucks in a breath, and lets his hands fall to his sides again. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Peter meets Chris’s gaze, and cocks a questioning eyebrow. The he tilts his head toward Stiles’s face, and then gestures at his dick.

What? What’s he asking? Does he want them to do rock-paper-scissors or something? 

Chris shrugs, and mouths: _ What? _

Peter rolls his eyes. “Sweetheart, would you like Chris to give you a kiss?” 

Stiles blinks his eyes open and nods dozily. 

Oh, okay. Chris knows the game plan now. 

Chris stretches out beside Stiles, holding himself up on his elbow. He puts two fingers of his free hand against Stiles’s jaw, and gently turns his head. Then he leans down and presses their lips together. Stiles shivers, and opens his mouth when Chris traces the seam of his lips with his tongue. He’s sweet and shy when he kisses, and Chris has to coax him into responding. Their tongues touch and Chris pulls back slightly, letting Stiles follow. Stiles is braver this time. This time it’s his tongue pushing into Chris’s mouth. 

And then Stiles’s whole body seizes, and Chris pulls back to watch as Peter engulfs the head of his dick with his mouth, and swallows him down. 

Stiles writhes. 

Chris reaches over him, catching Stiles by the wrist and holding his arm down against the mattress. Then he kisses their boy again, more deeply this time, and inhales his tiny gasps of pleasure. 

Chris is still kissing Stiles when he comes, jerking and thrashing under his hold. 

*** 

Chris wakes in the middle of the night. 

“Peter, Peter, Peter!” 

It takes a moment for Chris’s eyes to adjust. There’s moonlight slanting through the wooden blinds, and falling in stripes across Peter’s broad back. One of Stiles’s legs is hooked over Peter’s shoulder, and the other one is hitched wide as Peter drives slowly into the boy’s ass. Stiles’s head is thrown back, and he’s calling out Peter’s name in a mindless litany that Chris happens to be very familiar with. 

He’s not sure which one of them he wants to trade places with right now. 

“Don’t come yet, sweetheart,” Peter says, and Chris can hear the smirk in his voice. “Christopher wants his turn too.” 

Stiles rolls his head in Chris’s direction, and reaches out for him. Chris twines their fingers together, feeling every jolt through the mattress as Peter thrusts into the boy. 

“Chris,” Stiles moans. 

“I’m here, baby boy,” Chris murmurs, and presses a kiss to Stiles’s trembling fingers. 

Peter’s eyes flash blue in the darkness when he comes, and Stiles whines when he pulls out. 

“Greedy boy,” Peter says approvingly. “Chris, sit up against the headboard.” 

Chris rolls out of bed and strips his clothes off. He tugs his dick a few times—not like it needs help getting hard, the visual was more than enough—and then sits down again, bracing his back against the headboard. He spreads his legs and Stiles crawls up between them. With Peter’s help, he straddles Chris, digging fingers into his shoulders and crying out as Chris penetrates him. He’s hot and slick, lube and come easing Chris’s way. Peter encourages him to lean forward a little, and grips his hips. Chris laces his fingers together with Peter’s, and together they help Stiles into a rhythm, lifting him up and pushing him down again on Chris’s dick. 

Chris feels his orgasm approaching hard and fast. 

Before it can, Peter untangles his fingers from Chris’s, and curls one hand around Stiles’s throat. He pulls him backward gently, forcing his spine into a bow, and the moonlight falls on the long, slender line of his torso. Peter’s other hand wraps around Stiles’s dick, pumps it quickly a few times, and Stiles clenches hard around Chris as he comes with a shout. 

Peter lets him fall forward then, and he slumps against Chris as Chris comes too. 

Stiles’s breath is hot and damp against Chris’s throat as his body shudders through the aftershocks. 

“Good boy,” Peter murmurs. 

Chris turns his head to press a kiss to Stiles’s ear. 

“Good boy, sweetheart,” Peter says, and helps lift Stiles off Chris and roll him back under the covers. 

*** 

Chris wakes in the morning to the smell of bacon cooking. He rolls out of bed and pulls pants on, then shuffles into the kitchen. Peter is standing at the stovetop. 

Chris’s stomach clenches as he looks around. “Where’s Stiles?” 

Peter tilts his head and listens. “Going through my armoire, by the sounds of it.” 

Chris feels a rush of relief at knowing Stiles hasn’t fled in embarrassment at the things they did last night. He pads back down the hallway, and leans in the doorway of the second bedroom. Stiles is indeed going through the armoire. The doors are wide open, and he’s holding Peter’s bullwhip in his hands, testing the fall. 

“That one’s not for beginners,” Chris says. 

“That’s what Peter said.” Stiles turns his head and flashes him a brief smile. “He also said you were a beginner when he used it on you.” 

“I was a special case,” Chris says wryly. 

Stiles puts the bullwhip back and nods at the Saint Andrew’s cross. “What does that feel like?” 

“Different for different people, I imagine.” 

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, Peter said something like that too.” 

“Are you okay?” Chris asks him. “With what happened last night?” 

“Are you?” Stiles shoots back, turning to face him. “You know, since you made a point of telling that biker I was underage?” 

“Makes me a dirty old hypocrite, I guess.” 

“I guess it does.” Stiles quirks his mouth. “But yeah, I’m okay. I mean, my ass is still stinging, but in a good way? Peter says I have to wait until it’s better before he uses the flogger on me again.” 

Chris feels a jolt of anticipation. “You want to do that again?” 

“Yeah.” Stiles drags a hand through his hair. “Is it weird I like to hurt?” 

Chris can’t stop the laugh that rises out of him. “I think you might be asking the wrong person, Stiles.” 

Stiles snorts again. “Point. I mean, not only did I sleep last night better than I have in forever, but I felt good, you know? I felt like, for the first time in a long time I could feel where my body was, like where it started and where it stopped. I mean, I know that doesn’t make sense, but I felt like I could finally wrap my head around its dimensions or something.” 

“I feel anchored,” Chris says softly. “When Peter flogs me, I feel anchored.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and then, like he’s testing the word: “Anchored.” He flushes. “So yeah, I want to do this again, if I’m not stepping on your toes or anything.” 

“You’re not,” Chris says. “Not by a longshot.”

Stiles’s smile is as bright as the day. 

*** 

The pack doesn’t know. 

If Stiles gravitates a little closer to Peter and Chris at pack meetings, nobody pays it much attention. Chris notices Derek looking carefully once or twice, and one afternoon he pulls Stiles into a hug and sniffs him a little closely. But whatever he discovers in Stiles’s scent must be good, because he only looks over at Chris and Peter, and nods before releasing Stiles again. 

Stiles stops biting his fingernails so far down that they bleed. 

He stops counting his fingers. 

His smiles become genuine rather than forced. 

He was drowning, but now he’s finding his way to the shore. 

And Chris and Peter are here to make sure he doesn’t go under again.


End file.
